


One-L

by orbythesea



Category: The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-27
Updated: 2012-03-27
Packaged: 2017-11-02 14:11:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orbythesea/pseuds/orbythesea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nine months in the nineties.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One-L

In August, he arrives in DC with his life packed into the back of a fifteen-year-old BMW that he paid a buddy a thousand bucks for the dubious privilege of owning. The A/C gave out somewhere in Ohio, and by the time he gets to his new apartment, his shirt is soaked through and sticking to the seats. He's standing on the sidewalk by the car, pouring the last of his water bottle over his head in an effort to cool off when he sees her for the first time. He ducks out of the way before she can catch him staring. He sees her again a few days later, out of the corner of his eye as he's cannon balling off the diving board into some professor's pool and this time she's the one to look away. Two minutes later, he's introducing himself.

*

It doesn't take him long to realize that she's not just beautiful, she's brilliant. She doesn't volunteer to speak in class, but when their Torts professor subjects her to a particularly brutal line of questioning two weeks into the semester, she doesn't even flinch. A friend of his in his second year at Northwestern told him that it's not the gunners he should be looking out for, it's the quiet ones who don't waste time showing off. They're the ones who make law review, his friend said. Watching Alicia Cavanaugh, he understands what his friend meant. He finds her after class and asks if she wants to study together. 

*

In October, they make a deal. It's his idea, and she's skeptical at first, but he's persuasive. Twenty four hours. Twenty four hours, once a week, to do something that's not law school. He shows up at her apartment at eight in the morning on their first no-law-school day with bagels and coffee. She answers the door in her PJs and grumbles about sleeping in. Her hair is a mess of unrestrained curls cascading down her back. He wants to touch it.

*

Back before classes started, when he thought that all the stories people told about 1L couldn't possibly be true, back in August, he'd planned to go home for Thanksgiving. With finals looming, he knows he should cancel but Helena's home and waiting so he keeps insisting that he can make it. When unseasonably heavy snow back home delays his flight, he calls Alicia from the airport to tell her that he's changed his mind. They spend Thanksgiving eating turkey sandwiches and probing the depths of each other's knowledge of civil procedure. He has never been more thankful.

*

After their last final, she gets drunk for the first time since he's known her. They go to some end-of-the-semester party, together but not _together_ , and she keeps going back for more eggnog. He wraps an arm around her waist to help her navigate the walk back to her apartment, and she's warm and solid and unbelievably soft. There is mistletoe in her living room (her roommate's idea, he's sure) and he almost kisses her as they pass beneath it. Before he gets the chance, she stumbles and he thinks better of it. When he gets home for Christmas, he ends things with Helena anyway. Just in case.

*

In January, he offers her a ride home from the airport but then his car doesn't start and no amount of pleading, cursing, or kicking will make it go. He imagines her waiting in the cold outside the arrivals terminal at Dulles and wants to cry. After an hour, he thinks to call the airline to ask them to get a message to her, and another hour later she's knocking at his door with some guy he doesn't know. Peter Florrick doesn't look like the kind of guy who knows the first thing about cars, but Will shrugs his assent when he offers to take a look because Alicia seems to think it's a good idea. An hour later, the three of them are waiting for a tow truck and she's telling him how she met Peter on the flight, how he waited with her until she got the message, how he offered her a ride. When the two of them leave together, Will feels sick.

*

She shuts her casebook early on Valentine's Day and seems surprised when Will asks why. It's still six hours before the start of their official, designated, no-law-school day, and Alicia's always been the one to insist that they push through until the clock turns from 11:59 to midnight. She rolls her eyes and reminds him that it's _Valentine's Day_ and for a moment he thinks that they're finally, finally, going to take that next step. Then she tells him that Peter's picking her up at seven thirty. He spends the rest of the night getting wasted at Irish Times and in the morning, he can't remember the name of the brunette in bed next to him.

*

By the time spring finally starts to hint at its arrival, they aren't seeing much of each other. They still study together, but more and more she closes her books early to meet Peter, and one night she cancels on him entirely to attend a birthday bash for a judge on the DC Circuit. There are, unsurprisingly, networking advantages to dating an Article III clerk. She doesn't cancel their plans to go to the first day of the cherry blossom festival, but she's late and distracted. He thinks, rather uncharitably, that they'd both have been better off if she'd gone with Peter instead.

*

As the semester approaches an end point, things start to get back to normal. For two nights in a row, they both fall asleep on the futon in his living room, coffee cups and takeout cartons creating spots of color in the mess of paper spread over his coffee table. The third night, they have the foresight to call it quits before they can pass out, but it's pouring outside so she sleeps on the futon anyway. When he wakes up, there's a note where she'd been sleeping. _Went home to shower and change clothes. Back in a few hours._ He pushes the mental images that conjures up aside and smiles, thinks that maybe things will be okay after all.

*

When he steps out of the room after his last final of 1L, she's leaning against a wall in jeans and a GULC hoodie. She smiles when she sees him, asks him what took him so damn long. She looks different, somehow, and it makes something deep inside of him ache. He thinks back over the year, over pizza and beer and movies and casebooks and it hits him, then: this is the first time he's ever seen her relaxed. Instead of answering, he steps in close -- too close -- and tucks a stray curl behind her ear. The exam room door opens again, then Carla Templeton grabs his arm, invites them both out to celebrate. _Another time_ , he thinks. _Another time._


End file.
